Total Web anonymity for you, and the CIA

Spooks endorse 'Triangle Boy'

By Thomas C Greene , 13th February 2001

A software package which can keep the CIA's legions of snoops safe from detection as they trawl the Net in search of international evildoers ought to be good enough for your daily dogtrot through cyberspace. That's the pitch for SafeWeb's soon-to-be-released product Triangle Boy, which it is claimed will make it possible for one to surf the Web without leaving a trace.

SafeWeb already offers a free browsing gateway which uses 128-bit SSL, disables cookies and scripts and hides the surfer's IP, for pretty good on-line anonymity.

But according to an article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, the Agency is eager to involve itself in the more fully-featured Triangle Boy through its business development and capital investment arm In-Q-Tel.

Its motives, reportedly, are simply to carry out normal Internet surveillance tasks anonymously, but some suggest that the real reason is to figure out how to crack the program so it can spy on people using it.

Of course if that were their true aim, it's unlikely that the Agency would bother to license the product. They could just as easily, and a good deal more cheaply, download a few copies and set quietly to work on them, but there is little point talking common sense to conspiracy freaks. They just know the Trilateral Commission is up to their elbows in this.

A more plausible criticism is that the CIA wants the ability to penetrate and/or attack the networks of foreign adversaries with a good deal less chance of getting caught. The CIA denies any interest in applying Triangle Boy to concealing offensive information operations, though its fitness for such use is difficult to overlook. ®